Update6: Game is going well now that I have a proper CD key. Unfortunately my forum account is still banned.

Update5: As I suspected Funcom did it on purpose. Not what I would consider good customer service. Anytime you burn thousands of loyal fans in order to punish a few dozen violators (who can’t play without paying subscription fees anyway) I think your priorities need to be reevaluated.

Update4: One of the commenters below says he was able to “Upgrade” his canceled account using the retail box code and it fixed the problem. Try that first. If not try Update3.

Update3: Received a blurb from a friend that may help those of you experiencing this issue: “I had to make a new account.. need to contact them.. my old account that I set up with my preorder code and stuff was cancelled and the site wont let me reinstate it.. not sure how it happened.. as of right now I lost my preorder code” I can’t guarantee that you’ll ever get the pre-order benefits back, but at least it should get you into the game. Yay Funcom! (I personally can’t test this out… see Update2)

Update2: So I went to go see how my pre-order from Best Buy was going. It’s not. I can’t cancel it. I can’t change it to in store pickup (which wasn’t available as a pre-order option). The nice lady on the phone was very apologetic but there is nothing she can do. Lesson Learned: Preorder from Gamestop.

Update: Well, I hope my box key will work when it arrives. I’ve heard reports this morning from some people that the account was basically permanently canceled. Their box key didn’t rescue the account. If that is the case then there would be false advertising since the pre-order benefit which was advertised and promised is no longer accessible. We’ll see what happens when I actually get my box.

Not that I wanted my account cancelled. Someone at Funcom apparently decided I needed my account canceled so they did it for me. I know why they did it and there wasn’t any false advertising this time around. This time it’s just pure bad customer service.

You see, Funcom had decided a while back that anyone who preorders the game must at some point enter their full CD key in order to keep their account open. I can understand that. They need the retail box sales to help cut into some of those development costs and the last thing any developer needs is to have their product distributed via an “Early Access” program which then means their customers don’t even need to purchase the box.

What gets me is the timing of it. After the obvious disconnect between the retailers and Funcom over the Early Access problems I can’t help but come to conclusion that Funcom is totally out of touch with the retailers. Why they couldn’t have set the Pre-Order to Full Box upgrade cutoff to 4-5 days after launch to allow retailers time to make sure the game is properly distributed since after all they weren’t supposed to actually sell any prior to the 20th. I’m now regretting having purchased from Best Buy and not from Gamestop. Gamestop after all decided to hell with Funcom’s rules if they’re not going to disclose them all and started selling the retail box last Friday.

On a side note: I’m sure this is just related to the fact that the account is canceled, but it was kind of amusing:

It’s really ironic too because based on past Funcom behavior IF there were any instructions on what is going on they would be posted on the forums. I know that’s why I was trying to get to the forums. I say IF here because it seems like the details on this situation are about as well documented as the “Some restrictions apply. See registration page for details.”